CHAPTER 1569: STORY 1569: THE SPLINTERED CHOIR

The battlefield convulsed, the lattice flickering like a lantern in a gale. The storm of shattered echoes battered against silence, a chaos the survivors had forged into strength. Yet the fissure pulsed, its voice no longer mere sound, but weight.

A tremor ran through Kael’s bones, his fused blade vibrating violently. He fell to one knee, teeth grinding as the resonance sank deeper—not into the ground, but into flesh. His scars burned as though strings were being plucked inside his body.

The scarred woman screamed, clutching her side as her ribs seemed to hum with unnatural rhythm. Her spear slipped, rattling as though it too had been claimed. “It’s—inside me! It’s using me as an instrument!”

The widow collapsed, her wail torn into splinters by the resonance. Each fragment of her scream echoed back sharper, cutting her throat raw. Blood streamed down her chin, and still the echoes multiplied, each one heavier, more jagged.

The farmer struck his chest again, but this time the blow came back through him, his sternum thrumming like a drumhead. He staggered, gasping. “It’s... breaking us... from the inside...”

Elara bent over the boy, shielding him with her body. His glow sputtered violently, his chant breaking into stammers. Every breath he drew now came with a sharp crack, as if his very lungs were being forced into rhythm by the Unborn.

The fissure’s voice pressed through their marrow, each word like splinters driven into bone:

“You fracture sound. You scar silence. Then bleed as sound and silence fracture you. Become the choir of your own undoing.”

Kael roared, though the sound tore his throat, coming back in shards. He slammed his blade into the ground, forcing its resonance outward. “No—we choose how we break!”

The scarred woman caught his defiance, her spear trembling as she drove it hard into stone. Blood ran from her mouth as her ribs cracked against the fissure’s pulse, but still she struck—erratic, defiant.

The widow, barely standing, forced one last scream, this one jagged and raw. It came back shattered—but instead of retreating, she leaned into the shards, her voice dissolving into broken fragments that refused harmony.

The farmer pounded his chest again and again, his arms bruised, his breaths ragged, but his rhythm uneven, unclaimable.

And the boy—gasping, seizing—suddenly twisted his chant. Where the fissure forced stammers, he made them his. Breath, crack, pause—woven into a rhythm no void could own. His glow flared, uneven but defiant, threading discord through the lattice.

The fissure shrieked, shadows convulsing as its resonance faltered. “You bleed into splinters—and still call it strength?”

Kael’s voice tore free in answer, raw and ragged but steady: “Yes. Splinter us a thousand times—we’ll sing sharper with every break.”

The lattice flared again, its light fractured into jagged shards, weaving chaos into a storm.

The Unborn recoiled, not defeated but wounded, its voice retreating into the fissure’s depths. “Then splinter until nothing is left. I will be waiting at your last shard.”

The battlefield quieted, the survivors trembling, bloodied, broken—but still standing.

The boy’s glow flickered. Not whole, never whole—yet still alive.